MindMaze Raises $100 Million At A $1 Billion Valuation For 'Neural Virtual Reality'

Swiss virtual reality startup MindMaze announced it has raised ridiculous early round of $100 million at a $1 billion valuation.

The lead investor is multinational conglomerate Hinduja Group, which holds interests in energy, automobiles, energy and healthcare. (No other investors are being publicly disclosed at this time.) The round is still open and the company is seeking additional investors.

MindMaze isn't as easy to understand as some other virtual reality startups. The Lausanne, Switzerland-based startup brings together a number of technologies -- virtual reality, augmented reality, electroencephalographic (EEG) scans and motion capture -- to create a medical-grade "neural virtual reality platform."

MindMaze makes a headset -- called MindLeap -- that mixes both virtual reality and augmented reality. There's a camera on the front of the headset so the user can see the world around them while also viewing virtual worlds. Embedded in that headset is a depth sensor for capturing motion like hand gestures. And most interesting of all is the EEG scanner, which measures the electrical activity in the brain, that's in the strap of the headset. In online demos, the company shows how the EEG scanner changes what's happening in the virtual world by reflecting if the user is calm or not.

“The next phase of computing is going to be much more in tune with what we feel,” said MindMaze CEO and founder Tej Tadi in an interview.

To date, MindMaze's technology has primarily been used for stroke victim therapy in European hospitals. The VR environment can help retrain the patient's brain to regain motor function. The technology package is expensive for hospitals: It costs $80,000 to purchase or a minimum payment of $2,500 a month to rent. The company has certification as medical device in Europe and is currently working on getting approval as a medical device in the US through the Food & Drug Administration.

MindMaze plans to brings out a version for consumers sometime this summer that will be much more affordable than the version for hospitals. The MindLeap headset needs to be tethered to a PC with a powerful graphics card, like the Oculus Rift or HTC Vive. But the company is currently working on a headset that uses the smartphone to serve as the screen and brains, similar to the Samsung Gear VR headset that uses Galaxy smartphones.

Founded in 2012 by neuroscientist Tej Tadi, MindMaze came out of Tadi's doctoral research at the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology, an engineering school. Now the CEO, Tadi is based out of San Francisco. The company previously raised an $8.5 million angel round in March 2015 from unnamed angel investors and the Swiss government. It currently has more than 50 employees, most of them in Switzerland and France but there are another eight employees in San Francisco.

With this round, this would make MindMaze the second most well-funded startup in the virtual reality market, after secretive augmented reality startup Magic Leap with its total funding now coming to $1.4 billion.

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